Miller: Los Alamitos Equine Sale no labor of love

LOS ALAMITOS – He knew her as a baby, watched as she blossomed into a beauty and, on Sunday, could only watch again as she moved out on her own.

Well, not on her own, exactly. Someone paid $100,000 for her.

"You can't fall in love with 'em," Danny Cardoza said. "If you fall in love with a horse, it's gonna cost you money, like a woman."

Cardoza knows — horses certainly, women perhaps. He was a jockey for 26 years and a trainer for 10 more. Now he works for John Andreini, who has bred horses that have won more than $3 million.

Their filly, Composed Charisma, brought one of the bigger prices at the annual Los Alamitos Equine Sale, which is similar to the NFL draft, only with less Chris Berman and more manure. So, basically, it's a push.

This is a part of horse racing rarely highlighted. But, rest assured, it is a huge part and a part much like the sport itself. It's a gamble. Think about it. Anyone who buys a racehorse is placing the ultimate bet on the animal, right?

"It's all a gamble," said Dino Perez, business manager for the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association, which manages this sale. "The whole process, the whole sport is a gamble. It just starts here."

So, not only is this event relevant, but it's also interesting in that it takes place every fall on the grounds of the old Cypress Golf Club, where a young Tiger Woods once shot a 63, the course record. This weekend, though, even more athletic potential was on parade.

On Saturday and Sunday, 327 horses changed hands at a total cost of more than $5 million.

The sale also was fun because it allowed us to discover that people still seriously wear denim overalls. We also saw one woman in pink cowboy boots and another with horseshoes tattooed near her wrist.

The highlight, though, was meeting Cardoza, who, when asked what a buyer looks for in a horse, said: "You want to see a balanced body, a horse that walks like an athlete. You want a horse that looks like Michael Jordan, not one that looks like Charles Barkley."

The sale has the feel of a county fair, wrapped inside a church picnic, wrapped inside a night of high-stakes poker with the boys. They sell burgers, hot dogs and tacos, sodas, lemonade and beer.

It's all very quaint and charming, until realizing someone just paid thousands of dollars on a filly named Thischicksatrip.

"This is big-time business," Cardoza said. "It's a rich man's hobby."

That would explain the car valet parked nearest the front door, the Bentley.

The horses are paraded around a ring and then led onto a stage for further inspection. Sometimes, the animals let out a whiny or, in more poignant cases, express themselves from the other end, prompting a man in a Social Distortion T-shirt to take the stage armed with a rake and shovel.

An auctioneer opens the bidding and keep things going as long as possible, completely disregarding the prospect of suffering a concussed tongue.

"That's the auctioneer's chant," explained Keith Babb, 68, a former disc jockey and TV personality who has been in the fast-talking business for nearly 40 years. "There are a lot of filler words and numbers in there. We can get to rolling it pretty good, I guess."

A few notable facts on the sale for the novice:

*Buyers generally must be preapproved, their finances well established. No, you can not come here and try to put a racehorse on your American Express.

*If requested, X-rays can be obtained on any animal. This is sort of like saying, "Show me the Horsefax."

*The winning bidder must immediately sign a contract of purchase, a transaction that is videotaped in case someone later tries to weasel out of a deal.

*Disputes generally are resolved directly by the seller and buyer.

"We're sort of the middle man and referee," Perez said. "But there usually isn't anything, you know, like fist-fight wise. Most of the people here do this for a living, so they act professionally."

It all unfolded again this weekend, on an old golf course where the clubhouse has been converted into a church.

Young horses and their new owners getting hitched, chasing happily ever after.

"You can't fall in love with 'em," Cardoza repeated. "If you did, you wouldn't be able to sell 'em. You'd end up with a bunch of horses, and you'd end up broke."